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Firms paying large bonuses or dividends may not be eligible for state-backed financial support being considered to help businesses worst-affected by soaring energy prices, a minister has signalled.It comes as the Treasury mulls proposals submitted by Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, on Monday, amid an extraordinary turf war between the two departments over government aid for the sector.Boris Johnson has reportedly sided with Mr Kwarteng and backed a multimillion-pound bailout to prevent energy intensive industries going to the wall, but no announcement is expected on Tuesday.The Independent also revealed that the UK could be forced to rely on other nations for key nuclear and defence components unless ministers offer heavy industry an energy bailout — piling further pressure on Rishi Sunak to accept the proposals.Steve Barclay, the chief secretary to the Cabinet Office, told Times Radio that the government would need to examine “what is value for money and what is proportionate” when considering taxpayer support for the sector.“Have they recently paid dividends? Are they paying big bonuses? We’ll need to understand the detail rather than just knee-jerk to a taxpayer response,” he added.“Quite rightly, otherwise you would press me in terms of value for money for the taxpayer and the huge amount the Treasury has already provided to the industry. So it’s about balance and engagement”.The Independent understands the requirements for firms could be similar to the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) — introduced at the onset of the pandemic to provide financial support.The scheme, which is now closed to new applications, helped medium and large size businesses to access loans and other kinds of finance up to £200m.Those seeking under £50m had to ensure dividends did not increase while any loan amount was outstanding. Businesses requesting over this amount had to agree to not to pay any cash bonuses to senior management until the facility had been repaid in full while similar restrictions were put in place for dividends.Richard Warren, head of policy for trade body UK Steel, said state support would be welcome but industry representatives had not been given an indication by Mr Kwarteng about what help will be available.”Loans would be a very short-term fix but we need a mechanism for securing the industry in the long term,” he said.“We have not seen the details of what the Secretary of State has put forward. We need to see those details but the loan scheme that has been reported won’t fix the underlying issue.”It might solve a problem for businesses that have an immediate cash flow issue. It allows them to pay their electricity bill.”But that is not the problem; the problem is exorbitant energy costs. By the time you’ve produced the steel, you can’t sell it and you also have a large debt.”The British steel industry has been calling for years to be placed on an equal footing with competitors in Germany and France. According to UK Steel’s calculations plants in the UK pay 80 per cent more for their energy than their German rivals do.UK Steel general director Gareth Stace, told BBC News: “If this package results in us still paying 80 per cent more for energy than our competitors in continental Europe, then really this will really be a flimsy sticking plaster on what is really a major crisis that we are going through at the moment.”Conservative frontbencher Lord Agnew added son Monday that soaring energy costs were nothing to do with supply shortages, but were due to a “geopolitical move” by Russia to put pressure on Europe. The Treasury minister’s appeared to go further than the government has gone before in pointing the finger directly at Moscow for the current crisis.“The current squeeze on gas prices is nothing to do with the quantity of gas available,” he told peers in the House of Lords. It is a geopolitical move by Russia to put pressure on Europe and we are caught up in that. Public ownership of our own utilities would make no difference.”The Treasury has been contacted for comment. More

Lord Frost is to dramatically escalate the war of words with Brussels over the Northern Ireland Brexit deal – as he sets out new plans to rewrite the 24-month old accord.The UK’s Brexit minister will give a speech in Lisbon on Tuesday afternoon admonishing the EU for not listening to British demands.And the UK’s chief negotiator will present a new legal text to Brussels with concrete plans to amend the deal.His intervention comes after a very public spat with the Irish foreign minister in which Simon Coveney accused Lord Frost of deliberately trying to torpedo EU-UK relations by being unreasonable.Mr Coveney said demands by the UK to eliminate a role for the European Court of Justice were “a new ‘red line’ barrier to progress, that [the UK] know EU can’t move on”.In a sassy series of tweets the UK’s Brexit minister said he preferred “not to do negotiations by twitter”. The UK wants to change the Northern Ireland Brexit deal it negotiated because it is causing disruption to trade with the rest of the UK.But there is little appetite in EU capitals to seriously renegotiate the treaty, which was struck after years of painful negotiations with both Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s governments.The EU is expected to set out its response to UK plans on Wednesday. Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s Brexit lead has said one of the UK’s demands, removing the ECJ’s role from the deal, would cut Northern Ireland off from the single market.But ahead of the crunch point Lord Frost will claim: “Without new arrangements in this area, the protocol will never have the support it needs to survive.”Lord Frost is expected to tell his audience in Lisbon that the relationship with the EU is “under strain”.“No one should be in any doubt about the seriousness of the situation,” he will say. “That is why we are working to reflect the concerns of everyone in Northern Ireland, from all sides of the political spectrum, to make sure that the peace process is not undermined.”The EU now needs to show ambition and willingness to tackle the fundamental issues at the heart of the protocol head on.” More

It was late on Christmas Eve last year when the European Union and Britain finally clinched a Brexit trade deal after years of wrangling, threats and missed deadlines to seal their divorce.There was hope that now-separated Britain and the 27-nation bloc would sail their relationship toward calmer waters. Don’t even think about it. Such was the bile and bad blood stirred up by the diplomatic brinkmanship and bitter divorce that, two months from another Christmas, insults of treachery and duplicitousness are flying again.“It was written in the stars from the start,” sighed Professor Hendrik Vos of Ghent University. “There were a lot of loose ends. Several issues that would invariably lead to problems, like fisheries and trade in Northern Ireland ”It was the economically minute but symbolically charged subject of fish that held up a trade deal to the last minute. And fishing is also providing a wedge of division now. This week France was rallying its EU partners for a joint stance and action if necessary if London wouldn’t grant more licenses for small French fishing boats to roam close to the U.K. crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey that hug France’s Normandy coast. In France’s parliament last week, Prime Minister Jean Castex accused Britain of reneging on its promise over fishing.“We see in the clearest way possible that Great Britain does not respect its own signature,” he said, adding that “all we want is that a given word is respected.”In a relationship where both sides often fall back on cliches about the other, Castex was harking back to the centuries-old French insult of “Perfidious Albion,” a nation that can never be trusted.His Europe Minister Clement Beaune added to this late Monday. “The European Union scrupulously implements the agreement it reached with the United Kingdom. We expect the same from Britain.” Across the English Channel, Brexit supporters in British politics and the media often depict a conniving EU, deeply hurt by the U.K.’s decision to leave, and doing its utmost to make Brexit less than a success by throwing up bureaucratic impediments.The schism has crystalized in the worsening fight over Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. to share a land border with an EU country. Under the most delicate and contentious part of the Brexit deal, Northern Ireland remains inside the EU’s single market for trade in goods, in order to avoid a hard border with EU member Ireland. That means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods going to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K., despite the fact they are part of the same country.The regulations are intended to prevent goods from Britain entering the EU’s tariff-free single market while keeping an open border on the island of Ireland — a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process. The U.K. government soon complained the arrangements weren’t working. It said the rules and restrictions impose burdensome red tape on businesses. Never short of a belligerent metaphor, 2021 has already brought a “sausage war,” with Britain asking the EU to drop a ban on processed British meat products such as sausages entering Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland’s British Unionist community, meanwhile, say the Brexit deal undermines the peace process by weakening Northern Ireland’s ties with the rest of the U.K. Britain accuses the EU of being needlessly “purist” in implementing the agreement, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, and says it requires major changes to work. The bloc has agreed to look at changes, and is due to present proposals on Wednesday. Before that move, Britain raised the stakes again, demanding even more sweeping changes to the jointly negotiated deal. In a speech in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, on Tuesday, U.K. Brexit minister David Frost will say the EU must also remove the European Court of Justice as the ultimate arbiter of disputes concerning trade in Northern Ireland. That is a demand the EU is highly unlikely to agree to. The bloc’s highest court is seen as the pinnacle of the free trade single market, and Brussels has vowed not to undermine its own order. “No one should be in any doubt about the seriousness of the situation,” Frost will say in Lisbon, urging the EU to “show ambition and willingness to tackle the fundamental issues at the heart of the Protocol head on.” Frost plans to say that if there is no resolution soon, the U.K. will invoke a clause that lets either side suspend the agreement in exceptional circumstances. That would send already testy relations into a deep chill and could lead to a trade war between Britain and the bloc — one that would hurt the U.K. economy more than its much larger neighbor.Some EU observers say Britain’s demand to remove the court’s oversight shows it isn’t serious about making the Brexit deal work.Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney accused Britain of “shifting the playing field” and dismissing EU proposals without seeing them.“This is being seen across the European Union as the same pattern over and over again — the EU tries to solve problems, the U.K. dismisses the solutions before they’re even published and asks for more,” Coveney said.___Jill Lawless reported from London.___Follow AP’s coverage of post-Brexit developments at https://apnews.com/hub/Brexit More

A Tory MP has become embroiled in a race row after confusing two of his party’s most senior British Asian politicians and reportedly declaring: “They all look the same”.James Gray admits mixing up Nadhim Zahawi and Sajid Javid at a parliamentary reception for St John’s Ambulance last month and saying they look alike. But he denies making racist comments, as well as eyewitness accounts that he was spoken to by Mr Zahawi after the incident.The MP says he is “very close friends” with both MPs – who are among the most high-profile politicians in Westminster.Mr Javid has held the top offices of Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Health Secretary, while Mr Zahawi was on television several times a week during the Covid pandemic as vaccines minister. Following the incident, Mr Gray has been asked to step back from his role as a parliamentary advocate for the ambulance service.St John’s Ambulance said: “St John does not tolerate racism in any way, shape or form. We spoke with James Gray following the event about our values as an open, inclusive and progressive charity.”The MP denies the quote attributed to him that “they all look the same to me” – but admits saying the pair of high-profile politicians look alike.Mr Gray told MailOnline, which first reported the story: “The notion that this is some sort of racist remark is ridiculous. They are two very good friends of mine,” he said. “I said ‘I am sorry to confuse the two of you. You two look very alike’. I said ‘I am sorry if I got you too mixed up'”The idea that this is racist is completely untrue. Nadhim did not speak to me about it afterwards, he spoke to a lot of people. They are very close friends of me, both men.”Mr Gray told the outlet that he had not mixed them up before, adding: “They are very close friends of me, both men.”The Conservative party is yet to comment on the matter.The revelation comes after another Conservative MP, Jonathan Gullis, was caught on tape saying anyone using the term “white privilege” should be referred to the Home Office as an extremist. More

A damning report from MPs has slammed the “unacceptably high” death rates among people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.The study, from the cross-party Science and Technology Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee, said serious errors and delays, including on testing, care homes and the timing of the first lockdown, have cost lives during the virus outbreak.The pandemic exacerbated existing social, economic and health inequalities among ethnic minority communities, the MPs said.Moreover the study, which assesses the government’s initial response to the pandemic, found that higher incidence of Covid among minority these groups may have resulted from higher exposure to the virus “rather than—or as well as—higher comorbidities” linked to poor outcomes for virus including cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure and diabetes.In fact, Professor Iain Bell – Deputy National Statistician at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – told the inquiry that once socio-economic factors such as deprivation had been accounted for in their models, pre-existing health conditions “did not explain much”.The report further concluded that the UK’s preparation for a pandemic was far too focused on flu and both scientists and ministers waited too long to push through lockdown measures in early 2020 which would have saved lives. More

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is likely to be “short of money” to spend on a number of public services despite a historic increase in taxes, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned.With the release of its 2021 Green Budget, the economic think tank said that the rising costs of healthcare across the UK’s ageing population were encroaching on the level of funds available for other services, including courts, prisons and local government.The report found that the 1.25 percentage point increase in national insurance contributions to pay for extra spending on health and social care, announced last month by Boris Johnson, may need to be doubled by the end of the decade in order to meet future demographic pressures.Meanwhile, the UK’s economy is expected to be smaller by the mid-2020s than it was projected to be before the pandemic, an analysis by Citi found. Contained within the Green Budget, the analysis estimated the UK’s economy would be between 2 and 3 per cent smaller in 2024-2025 than the previous estimate, because of the effects of Brexit and Covid-19.Christian Schulz, Citi’s director of European economics, said: “The scarring just because of the pandemic may not be as large as we thought last year. The scarring due to Brexit may actually be larger.” “Brexit is casting a long shadow over the economy,” he added.The IFS also found that public spending was set to settle at 42 per cent of national income, which is more than 2 per cent above its pre-pandemic share, and the highest level of national income since 1985.Under these conditions – a shrinking economy and a long-time high in public spending – the IFS does not expect the chancellor will have extra cash to offer “unprotected” Whitehall departments, including local government, further education, prisons and courts, when he delivers his budget later this month.In fact, in order to meet his objective of achieving current budget balance and sticking to planned spending totals, Mr Sunak may be required to cut the day-to-day budgets of these departments by more than £2bn next year, the think tank said.The IFS noted that these services had already been cut significantly in the 2010s, and a second round of reductions would prove difficult to reconcile with the government’s stated objective of “levelling up” the economy.The think tank explored a number of scenarios in its forecasts of public finances and spending, but cautioned that uncertainty surrounding these projections remained “incredibly high”.If the economy performs better than expected, the £28bn package of tax rises announced in the March 2021 budget may prove unnecessary for achieving current budget surpluses from 2023 onwards. In this case, Mr Sunak may abandon some proposed tax hikes or reduce other taxes, the IFS said.However, if things go badly, those tax increases may need to be tripled to achieve a current budget surplus by 2025.Paul Johnson, director of the IFS and editor of the Green Budget, said: “Rishi Sunak, a Conservative chancellor, is presiding over an increase in the tax burden to record levels in the UK and an increase in the size of the state to levels not seen since the days of Mrs Thatcher.“Yet the combined effects of ever-growing spending on the NHS and an economy smaller than projected pre-pandemic mean that he is still likely to be short of money to spend on many other public services.“On central forecasts, there will be little or no scope to increase spending on things like local government, the justice system and further education, after a decade of sharp cuts.“That said, he still faces huge uncertainty over the direction of the economy and hence over the state of public finances.“He will be hoping against hope that stronger-than-expected growth in revenues over the next few years will help to dig him out of what looks like a fair-sized hole,” added Mr Johnson.A Treasury spokesperson said departmental budgets would be set out in the spending review, which will continue to reflect “the public’s key priorities”.“Core departmental spending will grow in real terms over this parliament at nearly 4 per cent per year on average – a £140bn cash increase and the largest real-terms increase in overall departmental spending for any parliament this century,” the spokesperson added.The IFS Green Budget 2021 was published ahead of the chancellor’s Budget and spending review, which are expected to be delivered on 27 October.With additional reporting by PA More

The government’s early handling of Covid-19 “amounted in practice” to the pursuit of herd immunity, a parliamentary report has found, adding that the delayed decision to lock down in spring last year ranks as one of the “most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”.Ministers have repeatedly denied that the government sought to build up population immunity against the virus by allowing it to freely spread in the UK. However, findings from a cross-party inquiry show this was the “effective consequence” of the initial response to Covid, resulting in tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.Rather than seek to suppress the virus at the beginning of 2020, as other nations did, Britain sought to manage its spread through the community by slowly introducing social distancing measures without committing to a lockdown, the report said.More than 50 witnesses have contributed to the 150-page report, including ministers, NHS officials, government advisers and leading scientists. It concludes that:Government experts were fixated on influenza prior to 2020 and did not see coronaviruses as a threat to the UKThe government initially adopted a “deliberate policy” that “amounted in practice” to seeking herd immunity. The decision to manage, rather than suppress, infections proved fatal for tens of thousandsThe abandonment of community testing on 12 March was a “seminal failure” and “cost many lives”NHS Test and Trace has “failed to make a significant enough impact on the course of the pandemic to justify the level of public investment it received”Social care has been overlooked by the government throughout the pandemic, while minority ethnic communities experienced higher levels of death in its early phase. Labour said the report reinforced the immediate need for a public inquiry “so mistakes of such tragic magnitude are never repeated again”, while its authors said it was “vital” that lessons were learnt from the failings of the past 18 months.The cross-party report, led by two select committees for health and science, draws on 400 written statements and accounts from various officials involved in the UK response, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, chief medical officer Chris Whitty, and Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to the prime minister.It examines six key areas: pandemic preparedness prior to 2020; lockdowns and social distancing; testing and tracing; the impact of the crisis on social care and at-risk communities; and the rollout of the vaccines.Prior to the emergence of Covid, the UK’s pandemic planning was too “narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model” that failed to learn the lessons from Sars, Mers and Ebola, MPs heard.Former chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies told the inquiry there had been “groupthink”, with infectious disease experts not believing that “Sars, or another Sars, would get from Asia to us”. She likened it to a “form of British exceptionalism”.MPs concluded that, in the opening months of the crisis, those in power were operating through a “veil of ignorance” that was “partly self-inflicted”, with ministers and scientific advisers unwilling to learn from the experiences and tactics of other countries, notably in east Asia.This was an “inexcusable oversight”, the report said, adding that a culture of “groupthink” had taken hold in Downing Street, which should have been challenged. Rather than “doing everything possible to halt the virus” – like governments in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong – the government instead adopted a “slow and gradualist approach”.Guided by a desire to protect the economy, and the belief among Sage members that complete suppression of Covid would lead to a later second wave in 2020, the option of lockdown was initially dismissed in favour of gradually introducing social distancing polices that sought to moderate the pace of spread and flatten the curve of the first peak.“This amounted in practice to accepting that herd immunity by infection was the inevitable outcome”, given the lack of a vaccine and the UK’s limited testing capacity, the MPs said, meaning there were no real measures in place to protect the population from catching the virus.Even as late as 12 March, Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said that it was not possible to stop everyone being infected and nor was that a desirable objective. It was a “deliberate” and “dubious” policy, the MPs concluded, which was seriously mistaken in assuming that an “unknown and rampant virus could be regulated in such a precise way” and which “led to a higher initial death toll than would have resulted from a more emphatic early policy”.Officials leading the response failed to question the prevailing scientific consensus that had been established in government, the report added. Mr Cummings told the MPs he was “incredibly frightened” of challenging the “official plan”, while Mr Hancock said he “bitterly” regretted the failure to overrule scientific advice.Had the government changed tack and implemented lockdown just one week earlier, on 16 March, tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented, the inquiry was told.“As a result, decisions on lockdowns and social distancing during the early weeks of the pandemic – and the advice that led to them – rank as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced,” the report concludes.It also says that the abandonment of community testing on 12 March was a “seminal failure” and “cost many lives”. NHS Test and Trace was established in May 2020, but its “chaotic” performance throughout the year “hampered” the UK’s response to Covid-19, culminating in the imposition of two more lockdowns.“Vast sums of taxpayers’ money were directed to Test and Trace, justified by the benefits of avoiding further lockdowns. But ultimately those lockdowns happened,” the report adds.Robert West, a professor of health psychology at University College London, said that the “damning” conclusions of the report would typically “lead to resignations” in other countries.The government said it was “committed” to learning lessons from the pandemic and would be holding a full public inquiry in the spring. A spokesperson said: “Throughout the pandemic we have been guided by scientific and medical experts, and we never shied away from taking quick and decisive action to save lives and protect our NHS, including introducing restrictions and lockdowns.“Thanks to a collective national effort, we avoided NHS services becoming overwhelmed, and our phenomenal vaccination programme has built a wall of defence, with over 24.3 million infections prevented and more than 130,000 lives saved so far.” More

The British government waited too long to impose a lockdown in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, missing a chance to contain the disease and leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths, a parliamentary report concluded Tuesday.The deadly delay resulted from ministers’ failure to question the recommendations of scientific advisers, resulting in a dangerous level of “groupthink” that caused them to dismiss the more aggressive strategies adopted in East and Southeast Asia, according to the joint report from the House of Commons’ science and health committees. It was only when Britain’s National Health Service risked being overwhelmed by rapidly rising infections that Prime Minister Boris Johnson s Conservative government finally ordered a lockdown.“There was a desire to avoid a lockdown because of the immense harm it would entail to the economy, normal health services and society,’’ the report said. “In the absence of other strategies such as rigorous case isolation, a meaningful test-and-trace operation, and robust border controls, a full lockdown was inevitable and should have come sooner.’’The U.K. parliamentary report comes amid frustration with the timetable for a formal public inquiry into the government’s response to COVID-19, which Johnson says will start next spring. Lawmakers said their inquiry was designed to uncover why Britain performed “significantly worse” than many other countries during the early days of the pandemic so that the U.K. could improve its response to the ongoing threat from COVID-19 and prepare for future threats. The 150-page report is based on testimony from 50 witnesses, including former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and former government insider Dominic Cummings It was unanimously approved by 22 lawmakers from the three largest parties in Parliament: the governing Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party and the Scottish National Party.The committees praised the government’s early focus on vaccines as the ultimate way out of the pandemic and its decision to invest in vaccine development. These decisions led to Britain’s successful inoculation program, which has seen almost 80% of people 12 and over now fully vaccinated.“Millions of lives will ultimately be saved as a result of the global vaccine effort in which the U.K. has played a leading part,” the committees said. But they also criticized the government’s test-and-trace program, saying its slow, uncertain and often chaotic performance hampered Britain’s response to the pandemic.The government’s strategy during the first three months of the crisis reflected official scientific advice that widespread infection was inevitable given that testing capacity was limited; that there was no immediate prospect for a vaccine; and the belief that the public wouldn’t accept a lengthy lockdown, the report said. As a result, the government sought merely to manage the spread of the virus, instead of trying to stop it altogether.The report described this as a “serious early error” that the U.K. shared with many countries in Europe and North America.“Accountability in a democracy depends on elected decision-makers not just taking advice, but examining, questioning and challenging it before making their own decisions,” the committees said. “Although it was a rapidly changing situation, given the large number of deaths predicted, it was surprising the initially fatalistic assumptions about the impossibility of suppressing the virus were not challenged until it became clear the NHS would be overwhelmed.”Trish Greenhalgh, a professor of primary care health services at the University of Oxford, said the report “hints at a less-than-healthy’’ relationship between government and scientific bodies. With COVID-19 still killing hundreds of people every week in Britain, advisory committees continue to debate exactly what evidence is “sufficiently definitive” to be considered certain, she said.“Uncertainty is a defining feature of crises…,’’ Greenhalgh said. “Dare we replace ‘following the science’ with ‘deliberating on what best to do when the problem is urgent but certainty eludes us’? This report suggests that unless we wish to continue to repeat the mistakes of the recent past, we must.” Even senior officials like Cummings and Hancock told the committees they were reluctant to push back against scientific consensus.Hancock said as early as Jan. 28, 2020, he found it difficult to push for widespread testing of people who didn’t show symptoms of COVID-19 because scientific advisers said it wouldn’t be useful.“I was in a situation of not having hard evidence that a global scientific consensus of decades was wrong but having an instinct that it was,” he testified. “I bitterly regret that I did not overrule that scientific advice.”___Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic. More